"select all instances" of style is broken

[mouserancher]

I style sections of text using custom styles. When I use the right-hand
"Styles and Formatting" pane, and right-click on a style and choose
"Select all ### Instance(s)" then I get an odd result. Most of the text
with that style gets selected, but with gaps in it. For instance, if I
had a sentence "This is an example of styled text" in a particular
style, and used "Select all ### instances" for that style, then
sometimes only "This is an" and "styled text" will get selected in that
sentence. When I check the style of "example of" it confirms that it
has the same style as the surrounding text, but for some reason still
didn't get included in the selection.

Does any one have any ideas about the cause and solution of this
problem, please?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Mouserancher,

I style sections of text using custom styles. When I use the right-hand
"Styles and Formatting" pane, and right-click on a style and choose
"Select all ### Instance(s)" then I get an odd result. Most of the text
with that style gets selected, but with gaps in it. For instance, if I
had a sentence "This is an example of styled text" in a particular
style, and used "Select all ### instances" for that style, then
sometimes only "This is an" and "styled text" will get selected in that
sentence. When I check the style of "example of" it confirms that it
has the same style as the surrounding text, but for some reason still
didn't get included in the selection.

Has any direct formatting been applied to that text? If you select it and
press Ctrl+Spacebar do you get anything different?

this text isn't generated by a field, or anything like that?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[mouserancher]

Yes, if I select it and press Ctrl+Spacebar I get the underlying style
(which is itself a custom style). The custom style I'm trying to select
happens to be that underlying custom style with bold added. But that's
true, and the result is the same, if I select text that *does* get
selected by "Select all ### Instance(s)."

I'd rather not have to define styles all in terms of "Normal + stuff",
since being able to create a set of related custom styles lets me
select different subsets of the document... which is my main reason for
creating the custom styles. I.e. Selecting style "custom1" selects a
portion of the document, and style "custom2" (which is custom1+bold)
selects a subset of the custom1 text. It'd be a useful ability (if it
was working!).

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Mouserancher,

Yes, if I select it and press Ctrl+Spacebar I get the underlying style
(which is itself a custom style). The custom style I'm trying to select
happens to be that underlying custom style with bold added. But that's
true, and the result is the same, if I select text that *does* get
selected by "Select all ### Instance(s)."

I'd rather not have to define styles all in terms of "Normal + stuff",
since being able to create a set of related custom styles lets me
select different subsets of the document... which is my main reason for
creating the custom styles. I.e. Selecting style "custom1" selects a
portion of the document, and style "custom2" (which is custom1+bold)
selects a subset of the custom1 text. It'd be a useful ability (if it
was working!).

It's working, it's just that you'd like it to work differently than it's
designed to As far as Word's concerned, formatting applied on top of
a style is an additional style (a character level style).

For someone who's trying to clean up a document, being able to make the
distinction that's getting in your way may be important

The only suggestion I can make is that you could use a macro to identify
(possibly highlight) all paragraphs with style x. (Macros can't make
multiple selections, except for using the same command you're already
having problems with.)

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail